Will Ferrell's San Diego

Favorite bar: “I did spend some time at the Ken Club, nice little bar. But I have the feeling that Blind Lady might become my new favorite.”

Favorite restaurant: “I have fond memories of going to Old Town when I was a kid, to those touristy Mexican restaurants. But they seemed pretty good.”

Favorite hotel: “I love the Hotel Del.” But he also has fond childhood memories of a fading motel on a North County beach. “Not the greatest motel, but for a 10-year-old with a boogie board, it was perfect.”

Favorite Comic-Con memory: At last year’s convention, he told a reporter that he wanted to stroll the exhibition hall “amongst my people” dressed as the Burger King.

“Someone at Burger King read that and sent me the giant head. So next (time) I’ll have to walk around wearing the Burger King head.”

Will Ferrell is less a comedian than an atmospheric and — let’s be frank — mental disturbance. He roars through movies and TV shows, scattering chaos and gale-force laughter in his wake.

Hurricane Will has hit San Diego before. (Remember his turn as Ron Burgundy in “Anchorman”?) But when this raucous, unruly force blows back into town Saturday to lead a pub crawl, what will save us from a liquored-up mob scene?

If all goes well, the horde will donate to Cancer for College, the Vista-based charity founded by his college fraternity brother, Craig Pollard. While Ferrell will do almost anything for a laugh, he never kids about this cause.

“Will’s amazing,” said Megan Hickey, 25, who used her $16,000 Cancer for College scholarship to complete her University of San Diego nursing studies. “He has his heart completely in this organization.”

Ferrell and Pollard met at the University of Southern California, when both were Delta Tau Delta pledges. Ferrell was already the campus’ premier prankster and — as he later demonstrated in the movie “Old School” — most enthusiastic streaker. Pollard was a Trojans baseball player whose sophomore season was interrupted by a cancer diagnosis.

In fact, it was a re-diagnosis. In high school, Pollard underwent surgery and chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. When it recurred four years later, he underwent a bone-marrow transplant and some soul-searching.

In a hospital bed, he bargained with the Almighty: “Get me out of here and I’ll do something good.”

His cause took shape after his recovery, while volunteering as a counselor at a camp for youngsters with cancer. Pollard noticed that parents spent every penny they had — and borrowed more — to pay for treatment. The immediate goal was survival, not higher education.

“They were not even thinking about putting away money for college,” Pollard said.

In his senior year at USC, Pollard won “Business Plan of the Year” by outlining a nonprofit group that would pay cancer patients’ college expenses.